


Red String

by DyslexicSquirrel



Series: Stony Bingo 2019 [12]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alpha Steve Rogers, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Shifters, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Omega Tony Stark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-03
Updated: 2019-08-03
Packaged: 2020-07-30 04:28:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20091274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DyslexicSquirrel/pseuds/DyslexicSquirrel
Summary: I’d heard someone describe the tie between soulmates as a red string that connected them through time and space. Never put much stock into it. Because who actually meets their soulmate, right?





	Red String

**Author's Note:**

> There is talk of death/dying and even though no one dies and no one is suicidal, some people still may find it triggering so please be careful. 
> 
> This is a fill for round 2 of Stony Bingo: square- S4  
prompt- red string

I’d heard someone describe the tie between soulmates as a red string that connected them through time and space. Never put much stock into it. Because who actually meets their soulmate, right? That one person who fits you like a puzzle piece you never knew was missing until the moment you met them? No one I knew and I knew a lot of people. I thought it was just a fairytale. 

Until I smelled  _ him _ .

He came to visit my dad. I have no idea why, I wasn’t allowed to know those kinds of things. I might have been Howard Stark’s son, but I was an omega and a young one at that. I’d just turned eighteen a few months before that day he came to visit our pack. Didn’t matter that my dad was pack alpha; I stayed out of pack politics and that was it. 

Which was why I was hiding in a tree so I could spy on what my dad was doing. Well, spying was such a harsh word. Maybe more like watching. Observing? Either way, I was up a tree, purposely down wind, which was probably the o lot reason the man meeting with my dad couldn’t smell  _ me.  _

My head tilted to the side as I studied him. He was confusing, didn’t smell like any wolf I’d ever scented before. He could be something else, but why would he be on pack lands? My dad didn’t deal with other shifters. He was  _ something _ , though. Not human. 

The man was big and blonde, didn’t appear much older than I was, but shifters aged slower than humans and often appeared younger than they were in human form, so that didn’t tell me much. Strong profile, dressed oddly in clothes that looked too small as though they didn’t belong to him. Had he come in his beast form and needed to borrow them? Shifters, out of necessity, were more accepting of nudity, but it wasn’t acceptable for strange alphas to walk around naked where unbonded omegas might see them. 

I was so distracted by looking at this man who might be my soulmate, if this feeling in my chest was really the tugging of that red string connecting us all the old crones passed down stories of, that I didn’t notice the shift in the wind. It wasn’t until the stranger stopped and pinned me with a gaze from the bluest eyes I’d ever seen that I realized I’d been caught. I yelped, lost my balance, and then I was tumbling to the ground. Damn my parents not being cat shifters because I did  _ not  _ land on my feet. I hit the earth hard, on my back, and stared up at the canopy above while I tried to catch my breath. 

The first deep breath I took brought me the stranger’s scent, deeper, heavier, weighing me down and making me dizzy. My eyes slid half shut, my nose pulling in another greedy dose of his scent. Something wild and unnameable. It made me want things I had only even recently realized I would want some day: to roll over and bare my neck. And that… wasn’t right. I blinked hard to clear my vision, shook my head against the ground not caring about the leaves and dirt getting into my hair. 

When his face was suddenly over mine, blocking out the leaves and the sun, brow pulled low in concern, I scrambled back until I was stopped by the trunk of the tree. He looked as though he wanted to reach out and touch me, but stopped himself. Good, I wasn’t his, he had no right to touch me. I was a pack alphas son, omega or not and I decided who could touch me, soulmate or no soulmate. I ignored the whining of my wolf; he obviously wasn’t thinking straight. 

“Are you alright?” He sat back on his heels, hands foster against his thighs. Oh, screw him for having a perfect voice, too. Soft, but deep. For once I was glad my dad started yelling at me, dumping cold water over whatever had been happening. 

“Tony, what the hell were you doing?” 

The stranger and I both stood, he with an enviable amount of strength and grace and me? I needed to hold onto the tree trunk behind my back and I stayed leaning against it because I didn’t trust my legs yet. 

“Taking a nap,” I lied, but my dad 1) wouldn’t call me on a lie in front of company and 2) couldn’t really be sure it  _ was  _ a lie. I’d been known to nap in strange places before. 

Still, he frowned at me. “Go find your mother, she’s been looking for you.” 

“Sure, alpha,” I said, using his title in front of the stranger as a sign of respect. Hopefully it would be enough to stave off a lecture later. He looked mollified when I turned to walk away. I did look at the stranger as I left, but I felt his eyes on the back of my head. Heard my father say, “This way, Rogers. Sorry about him, he’s… hard to control.” He sounded very much like he did not want to make that admission, but the fact he had said more about their relationship than anything. If Howard Stark was admitting to not being able to control his omega son? He wasn’t worried about showing weakness.  _ Curiouser and Curiouser.  _

I snorted, hoping I was far enough away that they didn’t hear me. If I’m hard to control, it’s because I’m too much like you, dad, I thought, crossing my arms over my chest. 

It would be ten years before I saw the stranger, Rogers, again. But I wouldn’t know it was him at first. 

*

When I was twenty-one, my parents died. My dad’s second, Obediah Stane took over the pack, and though it wasn’t explicitly stated at first, it was known that he wanted to mate me as a way to cement his standing in the pack. It was a common enough practice. Ostensibly, it was the new alpha taking care of the former alpha’s family, but it was also a way to exert their power. 

Stave didn’t ask me until a full year later. He was kind and solicitous. He said all the right things, expressed sadness over my parents passing. And I said no. He was surprised, but remained kind. A few months later, he asked again and my refusal wasn’t met with the same level of kindness. He didn’t do anything to me, but I could tell he was angry. I wanted him to be angry, to leave me alone, to look somewhere else. 

He didn't. He waited longer, true. Years in fact, but he still asked me again. Maybe he thought that since I was getting older and still hadn’t mated, that I would be more receptive. He didn’t know that I dreamt of blue eyes and a strong jaw and hands that had never touched me. That there was a hole in my chest which felt fathomless. I was less cynical about the crones tales of soulmates. I refused Stane again. He locked me in my room. When I escaped, intent on making it to a neighboring pack to take refuge, he was not amused. 

When I was twenty-eight, mere months after I refused Stane for the third time and my escape attempt, I was kidnapped.

I hadn’t been locked away again, Stane had left me free, if under guard “for my protection.” It had done little good when the car I was traveling in on a visit to my friend Rhodey’s pack in Pennsylvania was attacked in the road. My guards barely put up a fight when the masked assailants took me and shoved me in the back of a van. I’d tried to fight but against alphas and betas, I was no match. They drugged me and I woke up in a basement somewhere, chained to a bed and unable to move from whatever I was pumped full of. 

I’d later learn it was wolfsbane from the doctor they had  _ caring  _ for me. The man told me his name was Yinsen. He was the only one who seemed to speak English and the only one who talked to me besides. I was kept on a steady stream of wolfsbane to keep me lethargic and docile. Yinsen tried to help, missed a dose or two, but when I attempted to escape, I was subdued. They upped the dosage, even though Yinsen cautioned against it. It almost killed me, or maybe it did. I think my heart stopped, but Yinsen got me back. 

I’ve been here for three months. It was a few weeks ago, I think, when I almost died, or did die, I’m still not sure. Yinsen keeps telling me I’m going to go home, but I don’t believe him. If my pack hasn’t found me by now, they never will. I need to do something on my own if I want to escape. 

I asked for a piece of gum from one of the guards that chews it all the time. It was easy enough to pantomime and he gave it to me so I’d leave him alone. The radio they let me keep in my cell so they wouldn’t have to listen to me bitch about being bored has batteries. My plan could backfire if it even worked, they could leave me here to die, but it’s the only plan I have. 

I was still weak from being drugged, but I had a letter opener I stole from Yinsen (and I’m fairly certain he wanted me to steal it from him because what doctor carried a letter opener in the pocket of their lab coat?). As a weapon it wasn’t great, but if I had surprise on my side, I could do something with it. 

And that was how I ended up setting fire to the blanket on my cot. I sat in the farthest corner away from it and the door because I didn’t want to look like I was waiting for them to take me out. I also waited for the guard to leave for his smoke break he always took even though he wasn’t supposed to do the fire got big enough that they had to take me out to extinguish it. 

It worked, a little too well, maybe. There was no ventilation so the smoke from the cot, which went up like kindling, was choking the room and me with it. I was sitting in the corner coughing when a guard, not the smoke break one that had been here before, came in carrying a semi automatic and cursing. Seemed a bit extreme of a reaction for a fire in a concrete room, but whatever. He unlocked the door and didn’t even try to put the fire out, just started dragging me away. 

I frowned, trying to keep up and not trip over my own feet, when I heard a commotion somewhere up above. It got louder the closer me got, since Angry Guard was pulling me up the stairs and it sounded like… roaring? There was gunfire and shouting and screams and the guard was pulling me in the opposite direction from what sounded like the worst of it. 

I stumbled, using the opportunity to pull the letter opener from where I’d hidden it before the guard yanked me to my feet so hard I thought my arm was going to pop out of socket. He was speaking in an angry tone, pulling me down a hallway. There were more people here than I’d thought, running down the corridor in the opposite direction from where we were going and when he turned down an empty hallway, I realized this was my chance. I stumbled into him and when he turned toward me, I jabbed the letter opener at his face as hard as I could. I must have done some damage because he fell to his knees yowling, but I didn’t stick around to find out. I ran as fast as I could, trying to find a door that would lead outside. 

I couldn’t shift with the wolfsbane still in my system, but I could still smell and hear. I pushed myself, hiding when I heard anyone close by, and kept running down the corridors. Whatever was happening outside was keeping a lot of them busy, though. Had my pack actually come to get me? Did I care if they had? I’d been gone three months and even though it had been my home my entire life, I didn’t think I wanted to go back. 

I finally found a door that smelled like fresh air beyond it and pushed it open. The roar from earlier sounded again, angrier this time, a sound I felt all the way down into my bones. I had never heard anything like it. Ducked behind a car, trying the door but finding it locked. Other people, were getting in to cars across the lot, running away I’d guess. I was looking around for another way to get out of here when a plume of fire rained down from the sky on the retreating vehicles. 

I pushed up to look over the hood of the car, slowly, and my eyes widened. Holy. Shit. 

There was a dragon hovering in the air massive body covered in red scales that turned white across his belly, massive wings beating the air, snarling, head turning, breathing fire on anyone who shot at him or tried to run. Oh god, I really am going to die, I thought, but then the giant head turned in my direction and I saw familiar blue eyes in an unfamiliar face, and the wind shifted bringing me that scent I remembered so well from years ago.  _ Rogers _ . 

Jesus Christ, my soulmate was a fucking dragon. I didn’t even think they existed. No one did. Had my father known what he was? Probably. 

I was frozen in shock, asphalt digging into my knees, as he changed direction, as graceful in the air as he had ever been on the ground. He shifted before he even fully landed, one second a dragon, the next a man walking tall and confident across the lot. He took down anyone who tried to stop him with brutal efficiency, not even seeming to notice his nudity or his opponents weapons. 

He looked different, older. Or maybe he just seemed older because of the beard and his physique, muscles flexing as he moved, skin sheeted with sweat. When he reached me, he didn’t care about asking permission to touch me, he cupped my face as soon as he was close enough, leaning in close to scent me. He pulled back with his lip curled in distaste. “What have they done to you?” 

“Wolfsbane,” I told him, voice rough from smoke and exhaustion. I collapsed against the car, adrenaline abandoning me and taking what little strength I’d had with it. 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know. I would have come for you sooner—”

“How did you find me?” I cut off his apology because it didn’t matter. He’d made me no promises, we hadn’t seen each other in a decade. 

“I felt you.” He swallowed, eyes going tight. “I felt you die. It wasn’t for long, but…” Well, that answered that question. My heart  _ had _ stopped. “When I went to your pack to find out what happened, they told me you’d been taken.” 

“I don’t really think they cared,” I muttered, giving up trying to hold my own weight and letting him take it. He did so without complaint, bare knees against asphalt, no doubt uncomfortable. He just put his arms around me. 

“No,” he agreed. “They didn’t. But they will.” 

“Don’t bother. They’re not worth it.” I blinked as a thought occurred to me, tipping my head back to look up at him. “What’s your name?” 

He smiled down at me, face going soft. “Steven Grant Rogers. But you can call me Steve.” 

“Steve. Okay.” I was so tired all of a sudden, my eyes were heavy. “Are you really a dragon? I didn’t think they were real.” 

“I am. And I’m all that’s left.” He sounded sad when he said that and I managed to lift a hand to pet his chest. “I can answer any questions you have later. Let’s get you out of here.” 

“I’m only going along with this cause I’m too tired to move by myself,” I told him when he stood with me in his arms like I weighed nothing. I felt that little red string give a twang in my chest when he chuckled. 

“I promise to only carry you when you can’t walk, Tony.” He still had that stupid, perfect voice. “You didn’t even need me here. You got out all by yourself. I have a fierce mate.” 

He sounded proud and that made something inside go warm. But it was hardly the truth. We might be soulmates, but I wasn’t his mate (yet a part of me added) and I made it to the parking lot outside. If it hadn’t been for him distracting them I wouldn’t have made it farther than that. But I really didn’t want to argue with the  _ dragon _ who thought  _ I  _ was fierce. “You helped a little,” I said, magnanimously. 

“Thank you,” he replied, wryly. 

No one stopped us when he walked out of the compound, which turned out to be a squat gray building in the middle of nowhere. No one stopped us when he kept walking down a dirt road to a car hidden in a copse of trees. At least I didn’t have to fly out of here on a dragon cause I don’t think I’d be able to hold on. He set me down gently beside the car, grabbed the key from the wheel well and unlocked the car. 

He pulled the passenger door open and helped me get in. When he straightened up, he looked uncomfortable for the first time. My eyebrows climbed up slowly when a blush that I could only just see because of the beard appeared on his cheeks. “Give me a minute. My clothes are in the trunk.” 

Steve closed the door, went to get changed, and I started smiling. My dragon blushed. He had nothing to be embarrassed about because he had the body of a god. Did all dragons look like that? 

And screw it, I was keeping him. He’d said he was the last so I guess I wouldn’t be finding out. Not that is mattered. I didn’t want another dragon; I wanted mine. 

“Where do you live?” I asked once he was behind the wheel.

“I have a house in upstate.” He started the car and pulled out onto the dirt road. “Lots of land. I, uh, need the space.” 

“I bet.” 

“You can come run there, if you want. I know wolves like that.” 

“Oh, I’m moving in.” I buckled my seatbelt and settled back into the seat. 

“What?” He stared at me, shock written all over his face. 

“Eyes on the road,” I told him calmly. His eyes jerked forward. “Do you not want me to move in?” 

“No, I do. That’s all I want.” His eyes cut to me then back to the road. “You’ll always have a home with me.” 

That’s good since I have no intention of letting him get rid of me. One thing is bugging me though and even though there’ll be time later and I really want a nap, I ask, “What have you been doing for ten years?” 

“I was adding to my horde.”

“Your what now?” 

“My horde. We collect things. It’s how dragons impress their mates.” Well, that’s interesting. Wolves just show off how strong they are. Boring. “We’re also very acquisitive in general.” 

“Why are you blushing again?” 

“A dragon's horde is very personal,” he says softly. 

“I’m your mate though. You just said you were supposed to impress me with it.” 

“Yes.” 

“So, what, did you collect a bunch of dildos or something?” 

“Jesus,” he said, sounding choked. “I’ve been collecting art for years, even before I went to sleep. I just added to it.” 

“Sleep?” 

“Dragons hibernate, sometimes for years. We’re very long lived and life can get… lonely.” 

Aw, my poor dragon. He won’t be lonely now, if nothing else I can make sure of that. Feeling bold, I reached over and rested my hand on his thigh. He seemed surprised, but took one hand off the wheel to curl his fingers around mine. “How long were you asleep?” 

“Seventy years, give or take.” 

“Seventy years?” I cried. “How old are you?” 

“Old,” he said, looking at me out of the corner of his eye. “I knew your father when he was younger. I was sorry to hear about your parents. I was out of the country.”

He squeezed my hand and we lapsed into silence. He had been asleep for seventy years? And he knew my father when he was younger? That would take some getting used to, but it didn’t change anything. I still wanted to stay with him. I must have fallen asleep and been out for a while because it was dark out and I had a crick in my neck from leaning over the console onto Steve’s shoulder. I sat up with a yawn, feeling better than I had in a long time. The wolfsbane must finally be working out of my system. “How long was I asleep?” 

“Five hours. We’re almost home.” 

That was nice. I settled back into my seat with a sleepy smile. “Can we have kids, do you think? I mean how would that work?” I asked suddenly and Steve choked again. He was too easy to tease. Life with him was going to be so fun. 

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and comments make my day. ❤️


End file.
